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The Enduring Legend Of Marinka Pinka
And Tommy Atomic
Gay Chicago Magazine, June 1999
Chicago Sun-Times, June 17, 1999
Chicagotheatre.com, June, 1999
New City, June 17, 1999
Gay Chicago Magazine,
June 1999
As the world watches refugees return to what
may be left of their homes in the former Yugoslavia, Oana-Maria
Cajal’s The Enduring legend of Marinka Pinka and Tommy
Atomic couldn’t be more timely or more disturbing.
Set in a refugee camp somewhere in Europe,
an mélange of characters are hole up, awaiting their
passage out of this limbo place to a life they hope will
be better than what they’ve left behind. In an absurdist
style that plays fast and loose with non sequiturs, overlapping
dialogue and languages, and a pointed pointlessness, Cajal
depicts lives filled with hope and despair, dreams and realities
that grate on each other and, above all, the resilience of
the human spirit – even in the face of the greatest
of adds.
As she did with the stunning BLOODLINE: The
Oedipus/Antigone Story, director Joanna Settle takes a erratic
and epic story and gives it clarity and purpose.
Filled with glowing performances among the
vast ensemble – striking of which are Anne DeAcetis’ androgynous
teen who mesmerizes his campmates with a chess set made from
bread.
- Jeff Rossen -
Chicago Sun-Times, June 17, 1999
You enter the theatre through clear plastic
sheeting marked with the insignia of the Red Cross. Papers
stamped to look like official documents are scattered everywhere.
Restless people wander about, and some, wrapped in bright
orange emergency blankets, are curled up on ragged mattresses.
But director Joanna Settle, who earlier this
season staged the superb production BLOODLINE: The Oedipus/Antigone
Story, has devised such an intriguing rhythm for the 90-minute
play, and so deftly used stylized movement, music and the
design talents of Sahin Sahinoglue (sets), Meanlie Baumgartner
(costumes) and Jack Magaw (lighting), that you are drawn
into the artifice of it all.
Hovering over the play like some kind of malevolent
trickster is Herr Faust (the charismatic Mark Ulrich), crossing
destinies in the camp are Eva (Julie Hurt), a woman who clings
to the phone number of a guy in Los Angeles; her daughter
Little Eva (Eve Alexander, a sixth-grader and star actress
in the making) and Misha (the man who hopes he can be Eva’s
second choice when the rescue fantasy fails).
There is the idealistic Yuli (the very interesting
Anne DeAcetis) who carves chess pieces from stale bread.
And there are many others, so memorable you find yourself
wondering how their lives will turn out.
- Hedy Weiss -
Chicagotheatre.com
Under Joanna Settle’s fiercely intelligent
direction, this motley cast explores the erratic dimensions
of a psychological terrain damaged by insidious prejudice.
Audiences enter the theatre through plastic
curtains emblazoned with Red Cross insignia. Faceless, lifesize
cloth puppets on a string are placed in some of the seats.
When the characters face their immigration interrogation,
these vague, monstrous figures bolt upright with an air of
callous monotony. The plastic curtains semi-concealing the
men’s quarters create a blurred portrait -- further
emphasizing the nameless faces from faraway lands wailing
and yearning across our TV screens.
The invigorating Anne DeAcetis turns in a rambunctious,
yet unobtrusively mournful, performance as Yuli, a boy who
fashions a chess set out of stale bread.
- Lucia Mauro -
New City, June 17, 1999
Director Joanna Settle has created a striking
mood of clashing cultures underscored by a cable of human
commonalty that, while deeply buried, is impossible to disregard.
- Catey Sullivan -
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